


Hopeless Optimist

by Maltheniel



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Maglor and Maedhros are close, for now, the other Sons of Feanor and the twins come up too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24944341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maltheniel/pseuds/Maltheniel
Summary: Maglor has always been the hopeless optimist of the Feanorians.There are days when Maedhros finds that very annoying.There are other days when Maglor's optimism is all that's keeping him going.Since they left Aman, there are a lot of the latter sort of days.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Hopeless Optimist

Maglor had always been the hopeless optimist of the Feanorians. He could never take no for an answer.

Maybe it had something to do with being the second-born child behind the practical Maitimo. For most of their childhood, when one of their younger brothers ran up to them with an idea, Maitimo was the one to point out the fifty ways it could go wrong, and Makalaure was the one to try figuring out how to do it anyway. Maybe it was the fact that he was a musician who had never been able to accept that he might be unable to do something with his craft. (“Who says I can’t sing a wounded bird into flying again?”) Maybe it had something to do with being the son of Feanoro who had never been one to take no for an answer.

Whatever the reason, the fact was that once they got to Beleriand, the trait that had once made Maitimo despair of his brother ever reaching maturity developed into an indomitable optimism that perhaps, perhaps they could win this, no matter how dark their circumstances.

Feanor died. Makalaure did not weep, but he slipped into a corner and composed a wordless lament that wrung tears from Maitimo’s eyes. Then he emerged and declared there was still hope – they were here in Middle Earth now and they could do something about the Morgoth problem instead of just wringing their hands.

Maitimo got captured.

On the worst days, he thought of Makalaure and he thought, _I might one day get out of here._ He could never believe it – only Makalaure’s voice ever said it in his head, not his own – but it kept him from going insane.

When he got back, it was Maglor’s face he saw when he opened his eyes, wet with tears in a way he couldn’t remember seeing in a few centuries. His brother gathered him into a gentle hug, careful of his missing hand and old scars, and buried his dark head in his shoulder.

“I said you might yet come back,” he choked out roughly. “I _said_ it.”

Maedhros bent his head so his shorn red hair mixed with his brother’s flowing locks and relaxed into the first gentle touch he could remember in so long. “Never lose hope, little brother,” he whispered.

It was one of the few moments of sentimentality he allowed himself after getting out. He had seen the darkness of Morgoth, stared straight ahead into the lifeless eyes, and his practicality and the leadership he had honed as the oldest of a pack of brothers turned him into an unflinching leader.

When the Nirnaeth Arnodiad came, he staked everything he had on it. Maglor, still the hopeless optimist who had encouraged him countless times to go forward with the plans, said it would work. It had to.

Maglor came to sit by him in the aftermath.

“Don’t say it,” Maedhros said roughly.

“I wasn’t going to,” Maglor said wearily. Maedhros glanced at his brother, covered in ash and dust and blood, sword chipped and armor broken, and realized that for the first time Maglor was telling the truth. He had nothing hopeful to say in that moment.

Maedhros leaned his shoulder against his brother’s and they said nothing in silence.

After every defeat, Maglor’s optimism became less sure, less determined, but even after the Nirnaeth he insisted that Morgoth could be defeated, that they might yet fulfill the Oath. He said it incessantly, usually trying to convince his brothers. Maedhros secretly wondered if sometimes he was trying to convince himself.

Then Beren and Luthien stole a Silmaril, and the two things the brothers had always clung to as twin goals suddenly became entirely disparate things.

Maglor dropped the bit about Silmarils and went on about defeating Morgoth.

But the Oath could not be ignored forever, and when even Maglor started talking about it again Maedhros knew it would not be long before they went to war over it. He did not want to start another kinslaying – he still remembered the last one with a shudder of horror beyond even the memory of his torture – but the Oath left him little choice.

They left Doriath in ruins and without a Silmaril. And without Celegorm, Curufin, and Caranthir.

Maglor said nothing and played no music for the next month.

He created wordless laments, three of them, distinct and so mournful, before he would speak again, and even then it was only to compose words to the laments. It was months before he would speak.

Maedhros wished he had the luxury of not speaking for a month, but someone had to keep things running.

When Maglor finally interrupted a hopeless council to say they would one day defeat Morgoth, Maedhros drew a deep breath of relief. His little brother was finally functioning again.

But he said it very rarely, and as the years dragged on and despair dragged them down he started saying it only when his brothers needed to hear it. When Maedhros sunk into despair, or the Ambarussa closed themselves off with shields in their eyes, he would remind them that the Oath still could be fulfilled, that the war would be won.

He no longer said it as if he believed it.

The Oath dragged them lower and lower, more and more a thing of torment day by day. Only when all else had failed, only when Maedhros was being driven mad by his mind and by the looks of suffering despair on his brothers’ faces that reminded him too vividly of Angbad, did he give the order to attack Sirion.

Maglor scarcely said anything after the decision was made, and nothing whatsoever about hope.

When they left Sirion, they lacked two brothers and had gained two boys. Maedhros was incredulous.

“We can’t take them with us!” he exclaimed.

“We can’t leave them here,” Maglor retorted, and that was the end of that.

“Your father will come for you,” Maglor told the twins around the fire, “or your mother will. And when they come, we’ll give you back. But until then we’ll keep you safe.”

“You do know Elwing and Earendil won’t be coming back,” Maedhros reminded Maglor later that night.

Maglor laughed, rough and broken. “Of course I know,” he said, “but I have plenty of experience with comforting lies.”

Hearing that his brother hadn’t believed what he’d been saying for years broke Maedhros a little; he’d known it, always, recently at least, but it was different coming from Maglor’s lips.

But the longer the twins were with them, the more they clung to Maglor, the more he started speaking hopefully again. “The war will end,” he told the twins. “You will know the land as it once was,” and he would describe Middle Earth when it had yet been relatively unspoiled.

He still told them their parents would come, even as they clung close to him – and to Maedhros’s surprise, to him as well – but after the day when Elros told him bluntly that they knew their parents weren’t coming but they were happy here anyway, he stopped telling them that.

He started telling them about Morgoth’s defeat instead, and he told Maedhros the Oath might yet come true. He said it so often, and with such a glimmer of real hope in his eyes that had been missing for years upon years, that Maedhros began believing him almost against his will.

Maglor had always been the hopeless optimist of the Feanorians.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little thing I wrote quickly about my favorite Feanorian brothers. Someday I want to add a more hopeful conclusion to it.
> 
> If anyone knows off the top of their head where the shift from Quenya names to Sindarin names should come, I'd really appreciate the advice! I can't figure out exactly where it's supposed to happen very easily.


End file.
